Should we be shocked a 15-year-old was charged in connection with the string of assaults in Christie Pits? A statistics Canada study suggests we shouldn’t.

Sexual assault offenders are typically male and known to the victim, but a recent study suggests they are younger than you may think.

Youth aged 12 to 17 have nearly double the rate of sexual assault offenders than that of the 18 to 34 age group, and more than double the rate of 35- to 44-year-olds, according to a Statistics Canada study published in 2008.

Walser has served as an expert witness in the U.S. court system on sexual assault and rape cases, among others, for more than 20 years.

“Sexual assaults are often considered part of an expression of a need to feel power,” said Walser. Stressors could leave a youth feeling “helpless and alone,” and that offenders “may need to experience some feelings of power somewhere in (their) life.”

An outburst of sexual assaults would represent something deeper and more ingrained in a teen’s psyche, Walser said.

She said that in general, “Individuals accused of sexual offences tended to be relatively older than persons accused of other violent crimes.

“Nevertheless, rates of sexual offending were highest among persons aged 12 to 17 (90 per 100,000 population), followed by 18- to 34-year-olds (55 per 100,000 population) and 35- to 44-year-olds (42 per 100,000 population).”

However, Rosemary Gartner, a professor at the University of Toronto Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, cautions those statistics only factor in “arrest data.”

“There’s always the caveat based on the huge under-reporting,” Gartner said, adding that many sexual assaults, especially groping attacks, are never reported and wouldn’t be included in the Statistic Canada study, which used 2007 police-reported data.